“Stib-ma albi kandar!”
Twenty-nine
At the last possible second the Pale Queen leaped. It was an astounding thing to see. She simply leaped over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was like a hundred 747s roaring just inches overhead.
The wind of her wake flattened the Magnificent Twelve.
“We missed!” Dietmar cried.
The Pale Queen plunged into the water of the bay, sending up a massive waterspout, swamping a container ship that had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For two long minutes she was hidden from view.
“Maybe we got her after all,” Jarrah said.
But Mack didn’t think so. And then they saw the water churn between Alcatraz and San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.
“She will attack the city,” Dietmar said. “She’s afraid of us so she attacks in a different direction.”
And then, she began to rise from the water. Hand over hand, dragging her vast bulk up out of the sea. Heading straight into the heart of the city.
There she would kill and maim. She would crush and eat. She would destroy.
“We failed,” Mack said. “We lose. The world loses. She wins. After all we’ve gone through. She wins.”
“‘When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.’” It was Ilya, the Russian boy in the wheelchair, who spoke.
Sylvie put a hand on his shoulder and looked at Mack. “Gandhi said that.”
“Actually, it is a fake quote made up by a smart person who knew the internet would believe it was Gandhi,” Dietmar said, “but it is an encouraging sentiment.”
“Did the smart person ever meet the Pale Queen?” Jarrah asked sarcastically.
“She’s attacking the city,” Xiao said. “So help is on the way.”
“What help?” Mack asked in despair. “She’ll destroy the city in minutes. We can’t even get there in time. What help is coming? Cops? The army?”
“More like the air force,” Xiao said.
Mack looked at her and followed the direction of her gaze.
Buildings had risen from deep places beneath the city, from under the narrow, clogged streets of Chinatown. Buildings that had seemed dull and solid unfolded like pieces of origami, revealing an incredible network of underground halls and chambers.
The hidden realm of the dragons.
And now they rose slithering and sliding into the air. Dozens of them in all the colors of the rainbow. The dragons Mack had seen in China were huge, and so were these, but they were tiny compared to the Pale Queen.
“As you know, Mack, we have a treaty with the Western dragons,” Xiao said. “Neither they nor we may fly freely in the other’s territory. Unless one of our cities is threatened.”
“One of your cities?”
“Beneath the streets of San Francisco are many amazing, unusual things you might never imagine,” Xiao said.
“And quite a few right up on the streets of San Francisco,” Valin said. Then shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I hear.”
“You went to them,” Mack said to Xiao, recalling her brief absence earlier.
“They cannot fight the Pale Queen. But they can get us close to her,” Xiao s